Northern Passage
eBook - PDF

Northern Passage

American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Northern Passage

American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada

About this book

More than 50,000 draft-age American men and women migrated to Canada during the Vietnam War, the largest political exodus from the United States since the American Revolution. How are we to understand this migration three decades later? Was their action simply a marginal, highly individualized spin-off of the American antiwar movement, or did it have its own lasting collective meaning?

John Hagan, himself a member of the exodus, searched declassified government files, consulted previously unopened resistance organization archives and contemporary oral histories, and interviewed American war resisters settled in Toronto to learn how they made the momentous decision. Canadian immigration officials at first blocked the entry of some resisters; then, under pressure from Canadian church and civil liberties groups, they fully opened the border, providing these Americans with the legal opportunity to oppose the Vietnam draft and military mobilization while beginning new lives in Canada. It was a turning point for Canada as well, an assertion of sovereignty in its post–World War II relationship with the United States.

Hagan describes the resisters' absorption through Toronto's emerging American ghetto in the late 1960s. For these Americans, the move was an intense and transformative experience. While some struggled for a comprehensive amnesty in the United States, others dedicated their lives to engagement with social and political issues in Canada. More than half of the draft and military resisters who fled to Canada thirty years ago remain there today. Most lead successful lives, have lost their sense of Americanness, and overwhelmingly identify themselves as Canadians.

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Yes, you can access Northern Passage by John Hagan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface: First Snow
  7. Chapter 1. Laws of Resistance
  8. Chapter 2. Opening the Gates
  9. Chapter 3. Toronto’s American Ghetto
  10. Chapter 4. Activism by Exile
  11. Chapter 5. Two Amnesties and a Jailing
  12. Chapter 6. Choosing Canada
  13. Appendix A: The Respondent-Driven Sample and Interviews
  14. Appendix B: Tables
  15. Notes
  16. Index